Trash is piling up on NYC streets, lawmakers say

NEW YORK - New Yorkers are noticing a pileup of trash on the streets and so is City Councilman Erik Bottcher, who represents Greenwich Village, Chelsea and Hell's Kitchen. He recently teamed up with some of his fellow West Side elected officials to send a letter to Mayor Eric Adams and the city's sanitation commissioner. The letter has three main demands.

"Number one: restore corner basket service to pre-pandemic levels, number two: increase street cleaning from one day a week to two days a week, number three: restore curbside compost service to buildings in our council district," Bottcher said. 

Basically, Bottcher wants to see the Sanitation Department operate the way it did pre-COVID. Then-Mayor Bill de Blasio cut the agency's budget by more than $100 million at the beginning of the pandemic. 

FOX 5 News reached out to Adams' office, which redirected us to the Sanitation Department. 

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"The Department of Sanitation is proud of our work removing 12,000 tons of trash and recycling every day to keep our city safe and clean, including during the worst days of the pandemic," DSNY said in a statement.

It goes on to say it welcomes input from elected officials and residents and that it's working with the mayor's office to evaluate sanitation programs.

"People have really had it with the overflowing corner baskets, with the litter in the streets," Bottcher said. "This has been a very difficult couple of years and the trash in the neighborhood is really just making it that much more difficult." 

Bottcher and his colleagues in the City Council are calling on the mayor to increase funding to the Sanitation Department. They say without enough money, there just won't be enough manpower to get the job done.